


the inevitable tide, flowing home

by janonny



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: A little funny, A little getting to know Steve and Tony's habits, A little smutty, Basically it's a little introspective, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Introspection, Introspex??, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 06:51:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18463727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janonny/pseuds/janonny
Summary: It starts with casual sex, but nothing ever stays casual between Steve and Tony.(Or the one where Tony and Steve get to know each other, slowly but surely.)-“Why is there a weapon in my bathroom?” Tony demanded, eyeing the little box he had found on the marbled sink counter and had opened up curiously.“Is that what you call your toothbrush these days?” Steve asked, wandering into the bathroom with his hair rumpled from bed, clad only in Tony’s old pajamas bottoms that were comfortably loose but short against his longer legs. His bare chest and hard pink nipples were a distraction that Tony manfully ignored.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: A very brief moment of undernegotiated kink where someone is tied up.
> 
> Note: This is set after TWS and Steve is back in New York, but living in Brooklyn. Bucky is barely mentioned in this fic, but this is canon divergence fic that assumes Bucky was brought back from Washington DC with Steve and all is well.
> 
> My eternal gratitude to [Sheron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/pseuds/sheron) for looking over this fic and giving it such thorough feedback. Without your help, I don’t know if I would have ever ended up posting this story! Thank you so much! >3< Thank you also to [LemonGrenade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LemonGrenade/pseuds/LemonGrenade) for the supportive comments and encouragement as I grappled with this story! <3

The first time they had sex, their clothes ended up ripped clean off. It was a mess of grabbing hands and desperate clutching, buttons popping off and fabric tearing in their haste. The seams on Steve’s shirt hadn’t stood up against Tony’s onslaught, and Tony’s zipper was irreparably broken under Steve’s grasping fingers. Steve had drank in every moment between them, eyes tracking every move Tony made. After all, he didn’t know if it would end up as a once-off, so he didn’t want to miss even a second of it.

They had both been overwhelmed with the need to get to bare skin, to touch and kiss and suck at every inch of naked landscape revealed. Tony’s clever hands had explored Steve’s body and his mouth ran a low, lust-drenched stream of encouragements and expressive pleasure. That was what Steve discovered that day. Tony liked to talk and every word that fell from his lips were as potent as his clever hands, but as Tony climbed to a climax, his verbal seduction dried up and he was left only with shuddering gasps, which were all the more arousing to witness.

They lay panting after toe-curling orgasms, trying to catch their breaths only for Tony to roll over to goad Steve into another round of sex, like he was trying to cram as much sex as humanly possible into one night.  Honestly, Steve wasn’t much better, reaching out tentatively to touch Tony’s heaving sweaty back, just to memorize the feel of him, except that led to kissing down the perfect line of Tony’s spine, and that led to light teasing bites to rounded cheeks, and they were at it again.

By the time morning had rolled around, Steve’s apartment was strewn with pieces of torn clothing and the bed was a wreck in the aftermath. They both woke slowly from deep, exhausted sleep, took one look at each other, and moved together for another bout of desperate sex.

The second and third encounter, they didn’t make it to a bed and they didn’t manage to remove any piece of clothing in its entirety.

The fifth time, they made it to a flat surface again, but only Tony’s crimson tie came through in one piece.

“Come on, you’re too slow, old man,” Tony said, but his hands roaming over Steve’s shoulders and arms were more of a hindrance than any real help with their undressing.

“Stop egging me on,” Steve commanded, recognizing Tony’s tactics by now.

Tony leaned forward and bit Steve’s earlobe, tugging it between his teeth before exhaling heated breath against sensitive skin to form the words, “What are you going to do about it, big fella?”

Rearing back, Steve yanked Tony’s red tie free from his collar and ripped his expensive white shirt open, sending a cascade of little pearlescent buttons flying across the bed and onto the floor. Tony’s eyes were wide, mouth dropping open in an aroused gasp. Steve pinned both of Tony’s hands above his head and paused to meet dilated dark eyes. He didn’t have to say anything, the silent question and answer passing between them so easily when they were both in the right frame of mind, like their heartbeat and breath and blood synced up enough to make words irrelevant. Tony inclined his head, the slightest of nods, and Steve used the red tie to bind Tony’s wrists together. He didn’t knot it tight, just made sure Tony could feel his bound hands with every move.

“Now you’re going to stay put,” Steve murmured, meaning right this moment, meaning more than that.

Tony’s chest heaved as he only nodded, silenced for once, but he parted his legs provocatively to welcome Steve between them.

Every stitch of clothing had been torn off that day, including Steve’s own. He just hadn’t the patience for removing them the usual way. He had sucked on those tempting dusky nipples, licked around the metal of the arc reactor and nipped at trembling abs, even as he had torn his own pants open and groped around for the lube. Preparation had been fast but Tony had opened up so sweetly for him, leaking cock as hard evidence of how much he liked the restraint, thighs clamped tight around Steve’s waist to drive him on harder, faster.

Steve had Tony twice that night, fucking into him over and over again until he writhed and spilled with open-mouthed pleasure, cock untouched. Only the red tie hung in one piece around Tony’s hands by the end of it, that splash of crimson that remained whole between them.

It went on like that for awhile. The two of them came together like crashing comets, rushing forward in a breathless inhalation before drawing apart again in sharp, shaky release. They didn’t really talk about it, didn’t discuss what any of their physical encounters meant. But when they moved in their own orbits once more, their eyes would meet from across the room and they would know that later, in a dark room, or a quiet workshop, or an empty hanger bay, they would draw together inevitably once more, hard and fast and temporary.

Steve couldn’t help but drink in every moment like it was the first time all over again, couldn’t help wanting to see more, see beyond the flashing smiles and deflecting quips. He couldn’t help but watch Tony in the aftermath, after everything, after the rushed removal of clothing, after the desperate wanton sex, watched as Tony put himself back together. Tony was careless with most of his possessions. Not all of them, but most. Thousand dollar jackets were left forgotten in the kitchen, expensive silk ties were abandoned without thought between couch cushions.

Then, there were the things he left behind with clear and careful thought. Like that day he had done a slow, tantalizing striptease until he stood before Steve in nothing more than a devastating red thong, hips cocked to draw attention to the bulge contained by the scrap of fabric. He had turned and looked over his shoulder with a grin, probably enjoying Steve’s stunned expression at the sight of that beautiful back tapering down to that thin red cloth cutting between those sweet shapely cheeks.

The red thong had stayed on, just pushed out of the way as Steve had kissed and sucked and fucked Tony’s lovely behind. He remembered falling asleep with his hand on Tony’s backside, smiling to himself at the feel of thin cloth on smooth skin. When he had woken up the next morning, Tony had left for work, but the red thong was still there, tangled in Steve’s fingers artfully, a purposeful memento.

Some things, Tony kept careful track of, always sought out before he left, no matter what happened or where they went. He never failed to shift through the folds of the bedsheet to retrieve his tie clip in the shape of a little Iron Man with trailing repulsor blasts from his boots, something that Rhodey had custom made. No matter how rushed they had been in pulling clothing apart, Tony always unerringly remembered that he had dropped his red sunglasses with tech embedded in them under the bed.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that even during intense bouts of sex, Tony’s sharp memory seemed to catalogue and file away where everything went. Maybe Steve should have felt insulted that he didn’t have Tony’s complete attention but he suspected this was just how Tony functioned all the time with everyone. And the result was that his favorite belongings and his tech were always easily retrieved from wherever they had been flung or dropped or placed during their bout of heated sex, as if Tony had a built-in homing radar for them.

Like right now, Tony was shifting aside the framed prints Steve had on the floor leaning against one wall, because a cufflink had rolled behind them. The little arc reactor cufflinks were a gift from Pepper and always left with Tony.

“These belong on a wall, not on the floor,” Tony grumbled as he moved the prints to one side. “And some of these have got to be gag gifts.”

He pulled one framed print out so that Steve could see it was the one of the American flag fluttering in the clear blue sky.

Steve winced. “It was a gift from a general. I don’t think it was a joke.”

“If they had superimposed your face over the flag, with a hand to your forehead in a sharp salute, then this could practically be an ad for America.” Tony wasn’t wrong about that and he could clearly read the agreement in Steve’s face because he continued, “Why do you still have it if you don’t even like it?”

“I haven’t found the time to look over everything I brought over from DC,” Steve said, even though he knew it sounded weak.

Tony hummed, looking over the prints before sliding another one out. “I like this one best. You should hang this up on that bare wall leading to your bedroom.”

It was an old black and white photograph of Brooklyn, taken pretty close to where Steve used to live. He hadn’t bought it, just lingered for a few seconds longer than usual outside the window where it was displayed when he had been out for coffee with Tony, and naturally, he had found it leaning against his door the next day, framed in elegant black wood.

“Of course you like that one. You picked it,” Steve said with faint amusement, unsure how he felt about the direction of this conversation.

He often looked at the prints he had, most of them still wrapped up and leaning against the wall, none of them hung up yet. Some of them were given to him by Bucky and Nat, both of them knowing his taste rather well. He had bought several on his own too after wandering into old shops and antique stores, where he sometimes thought maybe he belonged there more so than his own apartment. Once the packages were brought back to his apartment, his initial bout of interest was usually stifled by the inertia of uncertainty, of not knowing if this would last and if he would get to keep any of it. If it mattered whether they were hung up on his walls or not. He didn’t like to think about that in detail, always felt an urge to find a punching bag when the faintest whisper of it crossed his mind.

“ _You_ picked it, I just bought it when you weren’t looking,” Tony said, before sliding it back into place.

He finally managed to retrieve his escaped cufflink once he had nudged aside enough prints, and straightened even as he slipped the cufflink onto his sleeve. He was decently put together after a night of raucous sex, shirt only slightly crumpled and loosened tie barely tucked under his collar. Steve noticed something.

“Did you forget your tie pin?”

Tony didn’t look down, just stepped forward into Steve’s personal space. “It’s on your bedside table. I’ll get it when I get back.”

And then he distracted Steve with a thorough kiss, a careless grope which left Steve aching beneath his sweats, and then the bastard was sailing out the door with an unnecessary sway to his hips.

That day, Steve had picked up the little red and gold tie pin from his bedside table, turned it around in his hands, stared at it without seeing it at all, just hearing the casual way Tony had said he would be back.

That day, Steve hung up the black and white photo of Brooklyn. He hung up all the other prints too, except the one of the American flag. That one, he donated anonymously to Goodwill. Maybe someone could use the frame. 

That might have been the turning point. Or maybe it was something else. Steve wasn’t sure, but all he knew was that at some point soon after that, it seemed like they slowed down and spent as much time doing mundane things together as they did having sex. They both sought each other out for meals together, to watch a movie, for no reason other than to talk. It led to quieter moments, slower sex, coming together like the inevitable tide washing to shore. They didn’t have to always clutch, to always scramble for skin. Some days, they let their hands wander, spent as much time kissing softly as they did chasing new heights of climax. 

When they slowed down, when they had sex with a desperate gasping intensity but could do so without ruining two sets of clothing entirely, Steve realized that he still liked to watch. Not just during sex, although that was a spectacular view on its own as well, but everything else in-between, before and after.

He liked watching the way Tony sprawled, taking up a large part of the bed and Steve along with it, the casual claim he made on the mattress and Steve’s body. He liked watching Tony rummaging through his closet for something to filch after they had destroyed more clothing or just because he was feeling cold. He liked seeing Tony tinker with a Stark cell phone prototype at Steve’s kitchen table, spread its component parts across half of the surface, and then run off to put out fires — sometimes literal — at S.I.’s labs, leaving all his little electronic bits and bobs behind at Steve’s apartment without second thought.

But his favorite part might be watching Tony undress in his penthouse. He liked seeing what Tony did, how he moved when he wasn’t throwing his clothing off so he could get to the main event as quickly as possible. Even when there wasn’t any sex in the immediate schedule, he liked watching what Tony would do regularly, behind closed doors, when he was ready to pack it in for the day.

Just like all those times before, Steve leaned against the entrance of Tony’s walk-in closet now and watched with attentive interest.

“--and even though I said don’t touch it, of course, the moment Pepper stepped into the lab and I took my eyes off him, Harley went over and poked it,” Tony said, fingers moving deftly to slip off one cufflink without ever looking down.

Steve said with a completely straight face, “Someone poking at something they shouldn’t? I can’t imagine anyone doing something like that.”

Tony shot him a look from the corner of his eyes. “I feel like you’re implying something here about someone else other than Harley, which is preposterous, because there’s no one else possible who would behave like that.”

“You keep telling yourself that, mister.”

Tony turned slightly to make a face at Steve, removing his other cufflink with ease. He had only dressed up because of an important board meeting that morning, and now he was stripping off, layer by layer. He broke off occasionally to gesture, emphasizing the absurdity in Harley’s behavior.

“There’s a big difference between experimenting with the aim of achieving a scientific breakthrough and just poking at something to impress the older interns there. I thought better of Harley, all that early onset of cynicism had made me hopeful, but no, there he was, ready to blow up the lab in a bout testosterone-fueled competitiveness—”

“Oh, testosterone-fueled competitiveness? That’s something else we have no experience with at all,” Steve interjected with a wry quirk of his lips.

“Are you ever going to let me finish the story? Don’t you want to hear how Harley almost blew his own arm off, but worse still, managed to burn off all his eyelashes and eyebrows?” Tony asked, pointing a cufflink at Steve.

Steve held his hands up with a laugh. “Sorry, please continue.”

Tony huffed and went back to his story and his undressing.

The walk-in closet was large enough to be a sizeable room of its own. One floor to ceiling mirror had been slid aside to reveal an endless array of compartments, looking more suitable for a bank vault than a closet. But there were no keyholes on any of this. In fact, a very small drawer opened on its own the moment the cufflinks were off, and Tony dropped them into the tiny compartment. Steve watched as Tony’s clever hands worked his blue tie with a single white star at the top loose and slipped it out from beneath his collar. A rack of ties slid out the moment the fabric slithered free, allowing Tony to drape the tie neatly over it. At the wave of his hand, the rack withdrew on its rails and the tall mirror slid back into place to hide all the compartments away, all perfectly controlled by J.A.R.V.I.S. to respond to Tony’s daily rituals without requiring a single verbal command.

Watching Tony remove his clothing piece by piece felt…intimate. It was different when he wasn’t ripping the clothing off Tony or when Tony wasn’t doing a slow striptease with a dark, inviting stare. In moments like this, when Tony was just casually removing piece after piece and talking to Steve throughout the calm removal of his layers, Steve felt his pulse thrum beneath his skin and his cheeks warming up. It felt more intimate than sex and fed this hunger in Steve for more of the same.

This was a closer look at the same Tony who snapped at the team for putting coffee grounds into the sink disposal, who had a hundred projects running in his workshop but had everything laid out so precisely and neatly that he knew where every single tiny tool was kept. For all of Tony’s reckless abandon in his approach to life, he wasn’t as careless with his tools and armor, which included more than just the metal variety.

Being allowed to see Tony, with his neatly arranged closet, with the tech embedded in his rooms so everything could be stored away neatly and easily: it was a precious gift. This was the kind of glimpse into Tony’s life that Steve knew only a very small number of people would ever get to see.

He felt his blood racing in his veins, felt the tips of his fingers itching to draw across those broad shoulders, to help Tony out of his well-cut clothing. His eyes drank in the sight of Tony undoing the top button of his shirt. By the time Tony’s slim fingers had worked their way almost all the way down the crisp white cotton, Steve couldn’t hold himself back anymore.

Steve had no memory of stepping forward, but he found himself pressed to Tony’s back, brushing a kiss against his cheek at the edge of his neat goatee.

“—slightly singed,” Tony stopped abruptly. “Hello there, was I boring you with work talk?”

“No, not bored. And is it really work talk if it involves non-work approved experiments in your labs?” Steve asked with amusement. Tony always had hilarious stories about the interns at Stark Industries. They seemed to get a dressing down from Tony every other week, but there had to be something in the way Tony delivered his scathing comments which came across to the interns as, ‘I’m very annoyed at you, so what this means is you need to continue being reckless but be _smarter_ about it,’ since it never seemed to deter them.

Turning a little, Tony returned a soft kiss to the corner of Steve’s lips. “Was I going too slow? If you wanted a striptease, I could have made this a lot more interesting.”

And while a striptease from Tony was always a memory to savor, it wasn’t what Steve wanted right this moment.

“Raincheck on the striptease,” Steve murmured.

“You’re turning down a striptease from _me_ ,” Tony said with a note of outrage.

Steve smiled, knowing a lot of that outrage was for show, and curled his arms around Tony from behind. He started undoing the rest of the buttons on Tony’s shirt while looking over his shoulder to see what he was doing. “Just not right now. All I want for now is to see you get undressed and relax.”

For a moment, Tony only stood there and allowed Steve to pull his shirt apart, wide eyes watching Steve in the mirror.

“You’re very strange sometimes,” Tony murmured.

Steve smiled, brushed another kiss to his cheek. “You like it.”

Shrugging off his crisp shirt so that Steve could pull it off his arms and back, Tony replied with a grin, “You know I do.”

Tony was uncharacteristically quiet as he let Steve undress him slowly, following all the usual little rituals that Tony himself did. It felt like the most private of shared activities, being allowed to take part in Tony’s everyday habits, to slip buttons free of holes, unzip and part fabric, to skim cloth off skin and fold clothing onto the right hangers for dry cleaning. Tony let himself be moved, turned, watching Steve go through the usual motions that were performed by Tony’s clever fingers until Tony stood before Steve, completely bare except for the blue glow in the center of his chest. Steve drank in the sight, from the soft dark lashes framing depthless eyes to the well-defined arms that called to be traced and kissed, from tightening brown nipples on a toned chest down to the soft cock that hung beautiful and vulnerable between muscular thighs.

Steve looked into Tony’s warm dark eyes and murmured, “Thank you.”

He didn’t elaborate, didn’t think it was needed. Tony took his hand and drew him close until they were sharing the same breath of air, too close to see the irises in each other’s eyes.

“Any time,” Tony said, and Steve knew with bone-deep surety that Tony understood, and that Tony was giving him something more, something precious. It was tacit approval for more of this, for an endless access to this intimacy.

Steve pressed forward and kissed Tony through the shaky exhalation of his breath.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The first time they had sex, their clothes ended up ripped clean off which Tony found unbearably hot. It was a mess of grabbing hands and desperate clutching, his shirt torn like it was nothing more than wet paper and his pants ruined beyond repair. Clothing had been thrown to the floor as if they were offensive, strewn across the empty apartment as they made their way through Steve’s brownstone place in Brooklyn to the bedroom.

Between tearing at buttons and zippers, Tony’s ever-working mind couldn’t help but notice that the apartment was an odd mix of minimalism and clutter. It had been months since Steve had his things moved from Washington DC to his new apartment in Brooklyn, so he should have had ample time to properly unpack. There were books piled on shelves, including the shelves in the kitchen that probably weren’t for books, and there were teetering stacks of books on side tables as well. An old leather jacket had been tossed carelessly over a chair, scattered paperwork spread across the dining table. There were a few framed prints but they were leaning against the wall, not even hung up.

Other than a record player, the piles of books and the prints, the place lacked personal artifacts and looked barely lived in. It was almost distracting Tony from his persistent hard-on. But they reached the bed with the white sheets tucked in with hospital corners and Steve was right there, looking at him with a devouring gaze. Steve’s taste in décor — or lack thereof — could wait. For now, Tony was too busy drinking in the sight of pale smooth skin and wide strong shoulders, slim hips in briefs that barely obscured an impressive, hardening length. Tony had carefully rolled down the tight briefs, kissed the jut of a hip, mouthed at the slowly revealed stiff cock until Steve dragged in a breathless moan. At that point, Tony took pity on him and sucked the rosy head of that beautiful cock into his mouth with relish. 

After Tony had sucked Steve down, after Steve had pulled Tony up to kiss his come from Tony’s lips, Steve’s hands had moved restlessly from the breadth of Tony’s shoulders to the crooks of Tony’s elbows, down to his hips before sliding up his back. It was like he wasn’t sure where to start, what to touch, trying to take as much in as possible with haphazard, desperate clutching. That had turned Tony on all the more, to see Steve who was usually so composed and confident almost frantic with need. It made Tony wild and he said as much, murmured and moaned filthy desires as he mapped every single inch of that stunning body with an obsessive intensity, gave himself up to Steve’s ministrations with full abandon.

Their pleasure and want wound around each other in an unceasing feedback loop, translating into an intense longing for _more_ until they went for round after round of sex, unable to stop. A short respite consisting of panting breaths and idle caresses melted seamlessly into heated kissing and explorative touching. Even when the morning rays crept through the open windows, the way they were drawn helplessly together didn’t stop there.

Even when they parted ways that day, their mutual attraction didn’t stop there.

The second encounter consisted of three hard and fast fucks in Tony’s living room, clothes still mostly on, and the third was against the floor to ceiling windows with Tony pressed up against the glass, shirt spread open and pants caught at his knees, while Steve had kept most of his clothing on. Their barely undressed state made the whole encounter even hotter.

The fourth frantic sex marathon happened after a battle. Steve had kicked off his uniform’s pants in a frenzy and when Tony had lifted his arms to step out of his armor, Steve had reached up and grabbed at his elbow. Steve actually had to look up since Tony was still in his Iron Man armor, look up from beneath thick dark blonde lashes that glowed gold in the fading sunlight coming through the hangar bay windows.

“Keep the suit on,” Steve had said, blinking slowly, lashes fanning against his pale cheeks.

And suddenly, Tony had been unbearably hard within his armor, erection digging up against metal.

“Steve, you kinky bastard,” Tony had said breathlessly, leaning forward to kiss Steve with almost harsh passion.

“Aren’t you a billionaire playboy? Surely this isn’t kinky by your standards,” Steve had teased when they parted, his reddened lips drawing Tony’s eye. “Maybe you’re losing your touch.”

At that, Tony had laid his gauntlets on Steve’s shoulders and flipped him around, pinning him so that his chest was to the wall. “Not a playboy anymore, but I’ll have you know there’s an insatiable American flagpole that keeps me in practice.”

For some reason, Steve gasped, as if the words had an even greater effect than the metal hands holding him in place. Before Tony could think on it, Steve widened his stance, and looked over his shoulder with a heavy-lidded scorching invitation in his blue gaze.

“All I’m hearing is yapping, nothing happening yet,” Steve said with a grin, and the sheer cheek of it sent a rush of affection through Tony. 

But Steve wasn’t done blowing Tony’s mind yet. He braced himself against the wall and pushed his bare backside out, smooth skin pale against the dark top of his stealth suit. It was a siren call Tony couldn’t resist. He had laid his metal fingers against that bare muscled backside, pressed a thick finger between his cheeks and drew a sharp gasp from Steve with his teasing cold touch.

Things happened very quickly after that. Good thing Steve was the man with the plan, which meant the man with the lube in one of his belt pouches. It had been exhilarating to pin all that leashed supersoldier strength with his uncompromising gauntlets, hold Steve in place as Tony fucked into him from behind. For the first time, Tony loomed over Steve, overwhelming him, pressing him flat to the wall and murmuring into his ear with hot gusts of breath as he fucked Steve wet and open, coaxed out desperate moans with metal fingers wrapped around Steve’s hard cock.

For awhile, that was how their encounters always went, a purely physical joining that was impossible to resist, flavored with banter and dirty talk and nothing beyond that. They were two atoms colliding at great speed, their nucleons merging in ecstatic union, and when they split apart again, it felt like a huge release of energy should follow, an explosion should mark their parting. Alright, Tony might have had too much science on the brain, because that metaphor didn’t quite make sense. The gist of it was that they relished in the pleasure and the heat generated between their bodies wherever and whenever, gave in repeatedly to the magnetic draw between them, but it didn’t go further than that.

Or so Tony thought, at first.

Slowly but surely, it became, well, fun as well. It wasn’t just tattered remains of clothing left carelessly behind. Once, Tony deliberately left a very skimpy red thong tangled in Steve’s fingers while Steve slumbered on blissfully. Tony slipped out of the bedroom giggling as he imagined Steve’s expression upon wakening. The little red thong was something he hadn’t worn in a very long time and had put on the night before just to see Steve’s reaction. Boy, had Steve’s reaction been very, very satisfying.

But Steve had gotten him back that night when Tony had opened his bedroom door to the sight of Steve’s lovely bare bottom, clad only in that very same red thong. There must have been some coordination with JARVIS, because Steve was bent over and climbing onto the bed right as Tony walked in, thick thighs and his skimpily clad muscular behind high up in the air. It was the best possible way for the thong to be returned to him. 

Their carnal meeting of bodies continued to change and grow, gradually flavored with fun and casual intimacy. There was no conscious thought to it, mostly because Tony deliberately did not let himself think on any of it as their encounters unfolded. But occasionally, his ever-whirring thoughts wouldn’t let up, would pick up on some detail like how he had started spreading his things around into Steve’s space. He paid less attention to what he left behind at Steve’s apartment, made assumptions about his time and constant return into Steve’s orbit.

And then, one day, to his great surprise, he realized that Steve had done the same. It was a shock to his system considering how reluctant Steve seemed to be when it came to settling into his own little brownstone apartment, but here was something of Steve left in Tony’s space.

“Why is there a weapon in my bathroom?” Tony demanded, eyeing the little box he had found on the marbled sink counter and had opened up curiously.

“Is that what you call your toothbrush these days?” Steve asked, wandering into the bathroom with his hair rumpled from bed, clad only in Tony’s old pajamas bottoms that were comfortably loose but short against his longer legs. His bare chest and hard pink nipples were a distraction that Tony manfully ignored.

Tony pointed at the box. “That’s a knife by my sink.”

“It’s a razor,” Steve said, sounding a little hesitant. “Is that okay? I got a spare because some days, after I stay over, I—”

Tony couldn’t stand the uncertainty in Steve’s usually confident voice, the way those blue eyes flickered away, so he talked right over all that, “I’m an ex-weapons-manufacturer so I know a weapon when I see one, and you’re telling me you put that sharp weapon near your throat _to shave_? Oh my god, Steve, are you crazy? We’re not in the Dark Ages here. You don’t have to deal with a whetting stone and knife just to shave with the edge of a blade or whatever nowadays. I’m getting you a modern day, civilized shaver, complete with shaving foam and aftershave. The shaver is electric, it’s faster, and a big benefit is that there’s no risk of it cutting your throat wide open.”

Steve grabbed Tony’s gesticulating hand to stop his throat-cutting mime and pulled him close. “Thanks, Tony, but I think I’m fine with my straight razor. There are some benefits to it, you know?”

“Like what? A quick death?” Tony asked but allowed himself to be drawn up against Steve’s side.

“Like a very close shave. And not everything is better just because it’s faster,” Steve pointed out with a thoughtful hum, meeting his eyes in the mirror. “I could show you.”

Which was how Tony, after ranting about the dangers of the straight-edged razor, found himself sitting on his sink counter with Steve pressed in close between his legs, gentle hands tipping Tony’s head where needed, as a very sharp razor drew carefully along his skin.

In all fairness, Tony’s higher cognitive powers were diminished around a shirtless Steve. And he might have acquired a more positive view of shaving with a sharp razor after that, especially since it had ended with the two of them grinding together to a messy wet climax against that sink. Steve might just be implementing some kind of Pavlov’s conditioning on Tony, but really, was it such a bad thing if he was when Tony got such sweet kisses and spectacular orgasms out of it?

After that, Tony realized that all his determination not to think about what was going on between them in great depth meant that he had missed that it wasn’t just his own space that had changed; Steve had begun to fill his own apartment as well, slowly but surely. A sketch Steve had done of the team was stuck to the refrigerator with a couple cheesy Dodgers magnets. There was a modern, adjustable drawing table set up beside the windows where it got the best amount of sunlight, which meant the couch had to be moved to make space. Now the couch was somewhat off-centre to the television, a fact that drove Tony a little crazy.

On Steve’s bedside table, there was a beautifully carved lacquered box for a new and growing collection of pins. The collection had started when someone had sent him a little pin of a cat dressed as Captain America. Tony had called it Catty America and Steve had worn it on the sleeve of his shirt in amusement, which made the rounds on social media and naturally resulted in a flood of various pins being sent in fanmails and a whole new merchandise line involving Avengers pins. Steve only kept the pins he liked, but that still meant quite a lot of pins.

 Beyond the material changes, there was also a new openness between them, where their encounters felt slower and softer, where they spent time together outside of sex. But for the life of him, he couldn’t pinpoint anything significant to cause the slowdown.

All he knew was that on their 28th encounter, they had went out for dinner, arguing over whether billiards counted as a sport which Tony suspected Steve only brought up to provoke him, and afterwards, drifted back to Steve’s place together without any further discussion. When they had kissed at Steve’s door, it had been natural, a flow-on from verbal flirtation to a physical one. They had moved together without any rush, their kisses gentler and idle instead of focussed with only one goal in mind.

Tony had watched with amusement as Steve, even without the edge of desperate need, still behaved like a slob, throwing his shirt and pants at the laundry basket, only for the clothing to unfurl mid-flight and mostly end up draped over the side of the basket and trailing to the ground. They had wrestled playfully in bed and kissed amidst quiet laughter. Sure, they had also indulged in a drawn-out, bout of sex, but it felt for the first time like the mutual orgasms hadn’t been the sole point of the encounter.  

It was like a switch had been flipped after that, new circuitry laid down that allowed their burning electricity to take a different path. They still had rough and fast sex where they pushed clothing aside just enough to get to the essentials because they just couldn’t wait a second longer — like how for the 29th time, Tony had ridden Steve’s cock in his office, both fully clothed still, door closed but unlocked. But now, it wasn’t only about sex and interactions before and after sex that were just a coincidental byproduct. Now, they actually sought each other out even when sex wasn’t necessarily on the table.  

It was a slow awakening, a breathless emergence from a pool of heated mind-clouding lust into the shock of cold air which cleared the mind and allowed them to really _see_ one another.

Now, months after they had started, months after their rhythm had changed and changed again and finally settled, Tony watched Steve as he puttered around his apartment before they went out for lunch.

“I just need a couple minutes before we can go,” Steve said, plugging the charging cable into his Starkpad and leaving it on the kitchen counter, because he was a heathen who charged his devices wherever. “Did you want some water?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Tony said as he leaned against the wall by the kitchen cabinets, casting his eye around.

Most of the time, Tony didn’t set out to analyze Steve and his living space and what all of it meant, but since he stopped mindfully ignoring everything other than the sex, it was very hard to turn off the endless churning of analysis in his head. The back of his mind was cataloguing the shelves, the table, what was on it, what had changed. So it was impossible for Tony to ignore that nowadays, Steve’s apartment was less of a barren space filled haphazardly with books and unhung prints. It didn’t look like a messy, abandoned storeroom anymore. There was a lived-in quality to the apartment, like someone was staying here rather than just passing through.

“Sam came by earlier and he brought his grandma’s cheesecake,” Steve explained as he put a few dishes into the sink and turned on the water to soak them.

Tony often found Steve’s kitchen sink had something that needed washing since Steve preferred washing by hand rather than using the dishwasher and he never washed everything immediately. At least that meant that the kitchen didn’t look like an untouched reproduction of an interior design magazine anymore. Other than the occasional unwashed cutlery, there were a couple of colorful mugs mixed in with the original, generic white mugs and glasses, and there were oft-used pans and utensils drying on the rack.

Tony frowned, and opened the fridge. There were a couple boxes of leftover stir-fry and a lot of milk cartons. But no cheesecake.

He turned around, hands on his hips and pout on his lips. “You guys ate all the cheesecake? You didn’t leave any for me?”

“All’s fair in love and war and cheesecake,” Steve said solemnly, drying his hands on a dish towel.

“I’m not sure I will ever get over this betrayal,” Tony proclaimed as he pressed a hand to his chest.

“Let me try to make it up to you,” Steve said. And then peculiarly, he moved to the coffee machine, instead of towards Tony for some physical penance.

Watching and listening to Steve carefully work through the many buttons, Tony felt a little warm at the sight of the state-of-the-art coffee machine on the gleaming counter next to Clint’s gift of a Captain America shield-shaped waffle-press. The warm feelings weren’t because Tony was that much in love with coffee, although he did like it quite a lot, but because Steve barely drank any himself. That Steve had bought that coffee machine and placed it in his kitchen felt like a statement, an implicit invitation.   

Steve presented a mug of coffee to him with what seemed like an unusual amount of self-satisfaction. The slightly fruity aroma wafting from the coffee cup did smell fucking delicious and Tony took it with some glee. He drew in a deep breath and almost moaned aloud.

“You got Ethiopian Harrar coffee beans,” Tony said in a dreamy tone.

“I think I’m getting jealous of it,” Steve said with a grin, leaning back against the kitchen bench.

Tony sipped some of it and let out a deep, beatific sigh. “You called it overpriced acid battery fluids the last time we had some at Christie’s Café.”

“I stand by it,” Steve said, pushing away from the counter and pressing a kiss to Tony’s cheek before moving towards his bedroom. “But I need it for moments like this.”

“Like this?”

“To distract you from cheesecake betrayals,” Steve said over his shoulder with a smile.

What a dork, Tony thought, hiding his equally dorky smile in his coffee cup. Taking the mug of liquid heaven with him, he trailed after Steve towards the bedroom. As he went, his eyes were drawn to the prints that were all hung up now, along with framed photos of the team. On a low table was a digital photoframe, displaying a new piece of art every ten minutes, the only reasonable way Steve could keep and look at the humongous collection of selected drawings from fans — children or otherwise — that were being sent to Captain America daily.

Steve was turning out to be something of a pack rat, which might have always been his true form or could be a result of losing everything after the time he spent iced and then having much of it wrecked again in DC during Fury’s assassination attempt. He mostly collected records, books and prints, willing to fork out money for them if he was really interested.

There were other random items he had on display, not enough to count as a collection, but they added a touch of personality to his apartment beyond the record player and drawing table. A few old hood ornaments had their own stand, clustered together on a corner of the shelf, purchased because Steve remembered admiring similar-looking ones on the rare fancy cars that he had come across with Bucky as kids. There was a kitschy plastic penguin but wearing Sam’s Falcon wings and goggles, some knock-off merchandize that had made Steve laugh before buying it. Tony’s gift of a photo of the Howling Commandos he had found and restored sat framed on a corner of a shelf.

Walking into Steve’s apartment now, Tony found there was almost always something new to pick up when his gaze swept the space. It was a look into Steve’s life where he wasn’t too afraid to put down roots anymore, where he was finally allowing himself the possibility of settling in. Maybe Steve wasn’t aware of how much his apartment gave away, with the walls covered with a mix of old posters, classic prints and art, with his shelves now filled with books but also with his eclectic interests. His drawing desk had a pen holder, filled with all the free pens he hoarded and barely used. The cork board beside his window was covered in postcards he collected from various places he had been to, most of them local.

It felt like an honor to be allowed this look into Steve’s beating heart, his precious and fragile hope for the future.

Tony drew his thoughts away from Steve’s apartment to focus back on the man himself, and walked into the bedroom to see Steve going through his collection of pins. The collection was large enough that Tony would have offered to get Steve some kind of pin-displaying board for easy storage and selection, but he suspected that Steve preferred it like this, heaped in a box that could barely close. Steve certainly seemed absorbed as he sifted through the pile of pins. Unable to stay away any longer, he wandered over and leaned on Steve’s arm, peering over his shoulder.

“What are you looking for?”

“I can’t seem to find my Iron Mouse pin,” Steve murmured, finger shifting the pins over.

“You want to wear me on your body? You don’t need a pin for that,” Tony said as he draped himself over Steve’s back, arms curved around his neck.

Steve let out a huff, which could have been read as annoyance, except he also leaned back against Tony, welcoming the full body contact. He turned a little and gave Tony a wry look. “Are you an Iron _Mouse_?”

“I can be anything you want me to be, Candy Crush,” Tony said with a leer.

“Isn’t that a game?” Steve asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Just roll with it,” Tony said as he pinched Steve’s hip, getting his hand snagged by Steve’s other free hand. “Why the Iron Mouse pin specifically?”

Steve frowned and just responded with, “Why not?”

There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre around a stubborn Steve, so Tony shrugged. “I’m just curious.”

But that must have pinged some inner Tony-bullshit radar that Steve had because he turned around with a frown, never letting go of Tony’s hand, and asked, “Why now? You’ve seen me wear it before.”

Tony didn’t have to answer because Steve was actually paying attention to Tony now, eyes sweeping over him with the kind of sharp observance that meant it was impossible for him to miss the little Iron Mouse pin that Tony had stuck on the lapel of his dinner jacket.

“You little thief,” Steve said, but it was with warm affection.

“I was just bored when you were showering earlier.” Went unsaid was how Tony had rummaged through Steve’s personal belongings like an uncivilized human-shaped raccoon, and Tony was braced for a light rebuke at the very least. But there was none of that in those clear blue eyes. Steve had in the past handed the whole box over when Tony had asked about his collection. It seemed the invite was an open-ended one, and the thought warmed Tony so much that he couldn’t hold that gaze, looked down at their clasped hands instead and pretended to be interested in Steve’s nails of all things.

“I didn’t know you wanted to wear it. You’ve never been interested before,” Steve said, sounding curious.

For Steve’s open invitation to his collection, Tony responded with a little honesty and no hint of deflection in exchange, “I thought you would wear a Captain America pin and I would match you.”

He couldn’t help but look up again, never able to resist facing his own discomfort head-on. There wasn’t any amusement or exasperation in Steve’s wide-eyed look, only a softness and care that he hadn’t expected to see, that the situation surely didn’t warrant.

But Steve cupped his hand to the curve of Tony’s cheek, thumb brushing against his cheekbone, and then pulled Tony closer for a kiss. It was a tender press of their lips, like Steve was savoring Tony’s breath, sipping it from his mouth. The slow melding of mouths, the tangling of tongues, sent a tremor through Tony, caused his knees to inexplicably weaken. Steve curled his arm around Tony’s waist and pressed close, held him up, and kissed him senseless.

Tony had no idea what he had done to deserve this, but he wasn’t stupid enough to turn it away. Their clothes came off again, despite Steve having just dressed after his shower. There was none of the finesse Tony indulged in when slowly removing his clothing in his own penthouse. Right here, right now, they simply stripped. Nothing was strewn or thrown, but clothing were dropped and discarded where they stood. They fell into bed in a tangle of limbs, kissed and touched and moved together until they forgot about their lunch plans, until they forgot about anything but each other.

Tony couldn’t help but notice the way Steve mapped every one of Tony’s scars, drawing his fingers over the ones on his chest from the shrapnel that changed his life, touching the scar on his waist from a supervillain encounter, kissing the one on his wrist from a burn received when experimenting in his workshop with a lack of protective gear. There were times when Tony wondered if Steve missed having scars, if Steve wished he could collect scars like how he collected his random knick-knacks. Or was he just collecting Tony’s scars in lieu of his own.

After the slow and languid spine-melting sex, after they had laid panting and curled up together, after they had washed each other in the shower with careful attention and sweet enjoyment, then they dressed again for a very, very late lunch. It was more like early dinner by this point.

When Tony shrugged on his dinner jacket, snapping the sleeves down neatly, Steve came over and gently removed the Iron Mouse pin from Tony’s lapel, much to Tony’s confusion. But then Steve pinned it to his own T-shirt, right over the left side of his chest, and he turned back to his box again. He didn’t show Tony what he replaced on the dark jacket so Tony had to lift up the clothing from his body and peer at it upside down. It was the pin that started this collection, Catty America.

“We still match,” Steve said simply.

Tony looked up from the pin into Steve’s warm gaze, into that small sincere smile, and realized with a blooming happiness, that yeah, they really did.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by Tony’s throwaway line in Civil War where he went, _“Who's putting coffee grounds in the disposal? Am I running a bed-and-breakfast for a biker gang?”_ and cascaded from there. It led me to thinking about how Tony’s workshop is really incredibly neat too, and I wanted to write a little introspection on that. Yeah, I'm inspired by odd things.
> 
> Then I started thinking about Steve and he was harder because I had to extrapolate more and make up more stuff, but I did examine his apartment in TWS as part of my ‘research’ and so I wanted to write about him too. Then the sexy stuff intruded and this is the result. Note that the description of Steve’s apartment earlier in their sexual encounters is based on TWS videos and also TWS set designs of his apartment. There really was a print of an American flag on a wall of his apartment…
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed! <3 If you did like it, you can reblog my fic on tumblr [here](https://awesomelifechoices.tumblr.com/post/184181994213/fic-the-inevitable-tide-flowing-home). Thank you for reading!


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